BEWARE OF BMIBABY AT MALAGA

I was one of the many unfortunate customers to be returning to East Midlands on Friday 13th on WW5328. Our plane was at the gate and in good working order but the plane at the next gate, another Bmibaby plane to Birmingham, had landed with a cracked windscreen. They were delayed 4 hours before flying out on our plane leaving us with the damaged one. A member of staff later confirmed we were "bumped" by Bmibaby Operations in Nottingham. We were all left sat at the gate from before our flight time of 2.50 pm until someone came to inform us about what was happening at 4.45 am on Saturday 14th. No communications from Bmibaby staff, in fact there are no people employed by Bmibaby at Malaga. The operation is run by Servitor and Flight Care unlike Jet 2 and Easyjet who have their own staff. Relatives in the UK knew more than we did. We found out about vouchers by visiting the information desk as there was no news from Bmibaby. We were given 7.50 euro vouchers at 5pm and 10pm and 5 euros at 5 am. You all know what you can buy with that in Malaga airport shops. No offer of a hotel despite being asked twice. The answer was we are not allowed under the EU Directive and it was not Bmibaby policy to offer it. I have since found out it is policy and under the EU Directive. The airport police were great allowing us in and out of the gate area but it got to a point when the police would not let us out to the cafe and we were told to stay at the gate. The film "The Terminal" came to mind. There was no toilet paper in the ladies' toilets and some people were running out of nappies. I even contacted the emergency number for the British Consulate in Malaga who rang the airport and spoke to a manager. It was shortly after this that some staff appeared at the gate. This was the same staff that had departed a Bmibaby flight to East Midlands at 12.40 am and had walked past us but ignored us.

On Saturday 14th we were told at 6am the flight was cancelled and still they refused to take us to a hotel or help families with small children and no nappies. The plane could not fly until the chief engineer had flown out from the UK and he would not arrive until approx. 11am. The plane was cleared and we finally took off at 1 pm. Total delay 22 hours and 10 minutes. Total amount of vouchers per person 27.50 euros.

I would strongly advise anyone travelling with Bmibaby to have a copy of the EU Directive 261/2004 and Bmibaby's terms and conditions, especailly the section about flight delay of more than 5 hours and hotel accomodation. Now the long haul to get compensation. I will keep you all updated on the story. Story also sent to BBC Watchdog.

We too were waiting at the gate on Friday the 13th for this flight. I overheard somebody from the Birmingham flight saying that the EMA flight was being sacrificed in their favour, and good luck to us! After being moved twice to two different gates in the area we saw the flight departure time change to 00.11 the following day, and then heard the offer of vouchers being made over the PA system. We collected the €7.50 vouchers per person (less than the cost of a Burger King offering), and were given a duplicated sheet stating how "We deeply regret that your flight has been delayed. Rest assured that we will take all possible measures to minimise this inconvenience". It went on to say that we could rebook, by contacting the BMI ticket desk in AGP (which had already closed at 5.00pm) or ringing from abroad to 0044 8701 266 726 (a recorded message responded, saying that this service had been withdrawn) or from the UK on 09058 28 28 28 (presumably a premium rate phone number) which was unobtainable from abroad when we tried it twice. In the end we phoned a relative in the UK, who phoned the 09058 number, and made a new reservation for us. We await the bill for this call!

We are fortunate to have a property in Spain, so we hired another car, at higher than normal cost due to the on-spec booking situation, and drove back to our house, staying for another 4 days. We flew home uneventfully yesterday. We were amazed to hear of the actual delay experienced by the customers who waited.

We were disappointed both by the lack of information given to us by BMI, the fact that we were sacrificed in favour of the Birmingham passengers, and the frustration of being unable to make a new reservation from the airport. We felt seriously abandoned by BMI.